Outskirts of Care
Mittwoch, 17. April 2024 - 19:00 Uhr
Improper Walls
The exhibition presents two works—a participatory project, Fanonian Quilts, by artist and curator, Frida Robles and an interactive installation, Whispers of Living in a Collapsing World, by artist-theorist Nisrine Boukhari.
Centered around the teaching of the revolutionary thinker, militant and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, Robles's Fanonian Quilts brought together Vienna-based individuals affected by racism who shared time and space in weekly sessions in the past three months, stitching together an open-ended quilt while listening to fragments of Fanon's books with the aim to create a space of togetherness without the need of communicating in a performative way with the quilt itself serving as a canvas for sharing ideas and imagery within the group.
While Fanonian Quilts were co-created with a group of participants (Joy Apata, Jasmin Behnawa, ujjwal kanishka utkarsh, Óscar Cueto, Vrishali Purandare, Ritchie Nuryanto Traag and others) before the exhibition, Boukhari's project opens up to a broader audience for interaction throughout the show. The artist who researches "how language through words, sound and visual interaction occupies physical space and confirms expanded bodily existence despite movement difficulties, such as in the case of exiled people," shares in this work some of her strategies for maintaining hope and sanity when faced with the crumbling world. The viewers are invited to envision new futures through a shift from individual well-being to reflection upon collective responsibility.
Expanding the topic of community care through the public program, Lia García (La Novia Sirena) will present an iteration of her long-term project that explores identity and trauma through healing rituals and community engagement through a lecture called When the bullets took another course. The pedagogy of radical tenderness in contexts of war and a pedagogical workshop called Small pedagogical and artistic toolbox to heal the heart and Engy Mohsen will take us into the realm of falling in (and out) of love through a series of intimate encounters during the workshop Yourself, Other/s, and Other Other/s.
Outskirts of Care—the title referring to the distant, overlooked and inferior position of community strategies within the Western medical system—aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the redefinition and understanding of mental health problems by acknowledging the social, historical and political influences on our well-being as well as the power of community care instead of reducing it to an individual's issues caused by chemical imbalance treated primarily in an institutional setting.